Wonder Woman: Danny Huston Revealed as Ares?

by Kofi Outlaw | November 3, 2016

The new Wonder Woman trailer is out and DC Comics fans are combing over the new footage to see what they can learn about this next chapter in the DCEU saga.

The new trailer reveals plenty about the visual composition of director Patty Jenkins (Monster), and definitely more of the impressive fight choreography and super hero feats. However, there is a big question still hanging over the film: who are the villains that Wonder Woman battles?

After some careful viewing, we may have an answer to at least one of those questions.

Throughout production of Wonder Woman, there has been question over the casting of actor Danny Huston (Clash of the Titans, Magic City, X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Hudson is the type of actor you reserve for major roles, with plenty of villain parts under his belt (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). It was an easy conclusion that, based on both Wonder Woman lore and Huston's own resume (Clash of the Titans) the actor could be playing Ares, the god of war.

In more recent comic book revisions, Ares is technically Wonder Woman's brother, as Diana is the demigod daughter of Zeus and Amazon Queen Hippolyta. No matter what version of the story though, Ares has traditionally been a big nemesis of Wonder Woman, since the heroine's great love and compassion for the world directly conflicts with Ares's own philosophy of strike, death and destruction.

Throughout the trailer we see Huston's mystery character featured:

At 1:00 he delivers the trademark villain line, "The World can be ours."

At 1:54 we see Wonder Woman battling a figure she has snared in her golden lasso. A closer look reveals a CGI figure that looks conspicuously like Huston's character.

At 1:56 - 1:57 we see Wonder Woman battling Huston's character hand-to-sword; Huston takes a direct kick from Wonder Woman and seems to take it!

The 1:56 fight sequence actually looks like a prelude to the more superpowered fight scene we see at 1:54, and all of the above would go to strongly suggest that Huston is at least playing a figure revealed to have super powers.

Some fans saw the first trailer and said that Huston may in fact be playing real-life WWI German general Erich Ludendorff - and that's still totally a valid possibility. Huston could be playing Ares, who appears in the guise of Ludendorff, which would be a fun way to spin some DCEU mythos into actual history.

In any event, the story of a great savior like Wonder Woman battling the very embodiment of war - and probably coming away disillusioned by it, given how WWI eventually gave way to the horrors of WWII - sounds like a great story to us.

Wonder Woman arrives on June 2, 2017, followed by Justice League on November 17, 2017; The Flash on March 16, 2018; Aquaman on July 27, 2018; Shazam on April 5, 2019; Justice League 2 on June 14, 2019; Cyborg on April 3, 2020; and Green Lantern Corps on July 24, 2020. The Batman, Dark Universe and Man of Steel 2 are also in development.